“The best director is the one you don’t see.”

Jerry: Oh, you don’t understand, Osgood! Ehhhh… I’m a man. Osgood: Well, nobody’s perfect.

We’re making a picture for middle-class people, the people that you see on the subway, or the people that you see in a restaurant. Just normal people.

I’m delighted with it, because it used to be that films were the lowest form of art. Now we’ve got something to look down on.

You know, that stuff about pink elephants, that’s the bunk. It’s little animals. Little tiny turkeys in straw hats. Midget monkeys coming through the keyholes.

I hate that word. It’s return–a return to the millions of people who’ve never forgiven me for deserting the screen.

I have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe. Nor as utterly fabulous on the screen, and that includes Garbo.

The forest of Compiegne. Look at it. Like a kind grandmother dozing in her rocking chair. Old trees practicing curtsies in the wind because they still think Louis XIV is king.

God save me from myself.

The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.

You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.

The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

She was an absolute genius as a comedic actress, with an extraordinary sense for comedic dialogue. It was a God-given gift.

A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.

Develop a clean line of action for your leading character

If there’s anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it’s being taken too seriously.